New adapters for 40G and 100G technologies

Prague, February 24, 2014. CESNET Association and INVEA-TECH have developed a new generation of acceleration adapters supporting 40G and 100G Ethernet. The equipment based on the adapters effectively processes network traffic in the advanced high-speed networks thanks to hardware accelerations. The advanced features of the new technology for network traffic filtering, monitoring and generating can be used in broad spectrum of applications. The adapters and related technologies were developed during the project supported under the Alfa program of Technology Agency of the Czech Republic.

New solutions respond to the increasing demands on throughput of high-speed network equipment and backbone links that very often requires an upgrade of the physical infrastructure to a new one using more advanced technologies. Nowadays, 10G Ethernet is being replaced with 40G and 100G Ethernet.
The most distinctive benefit of new adapters is the capability to process traffic at a wire-speed and the flexibility that enables their deployment in many application areas. The capability to distribute network traffic over multiple CPU cores, filter it and generate test traffic makes the adapters ideal for lossless packet capture solutions, lawful interception applications, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), network testers and alike. For further information please visit the website of FlowMon (formerly INVEA-TECH), manufacturer of the adapters that introduces them to the market.

Jan Kořenek, leader of the research team in the CESNET Association, said: “The CESNET Association has been involved the development of acceleration adapters for monitoring and security in the high-speed networks for more than ten years. The 100G Ethernet technology brings new challenges related to the increasing volume of transmitted data and to the requirement of shortening the single packet processing time down to nanoseconds. Thanks to the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic the project enabled to utilize our long-term experience in the area of network application acceleration and to develop in collaboration with INVEA-TECH one of the globally first acceleration adapters to effectively perform network data processing at 100 Gbps.”

Petr Kaštovský, FPGA product manager from INVEA-TECH, commented: “Availability of 40G and 100G Ethernet affects mainly companies using or producing solutions for high-speed network traffic processing. For these companies, it is a matter of life and death to react fast enough and innovate their infrastructures and/or products so that they support the new technologies. That is why INVEA-TECH puts eminent effort into developing state-of-the-art products and makes available the network adapters and applications for 40G and 100G Ethernet. It allows our customers to be competitive on the high-speed networking market.”

The main features of new adapters are as follows:

  • Support of 40G and 100G Ethernet technologies
  • Use of the latest high-performance Xilinx Virtex 7 FPGA chips
  • Data processing on commodity multicore CPUs
  • Packet transfer over PCI Express Gen 3 bus allowing to process all 40G/100G traffic
  • Lossless wire-speed traffic processing regardless of packet length
  • Available applications offering useful and sophisticated functions
  • Appliances deployable in many scenarios ranging from packet capture solutions to hardware accelerated lawful interception solutions

About INVEA-TECH: INVEA-TECH is a leading producer of comprehensive solutions for high-speed networks including 10G, 40G and 100G Ethernet. The portfolio of the company includes solutions for accelerating high-speed network applications using FPGA technology suitable both for commercial and R&D areas. More at: https://www.flowmon.com/en.

About CESNET: The CESNET Association was founded by Czech universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 1996. It is engaged in research and development in information and communication technologies and builds and develops the CESNET national e-infrastructure for research and education. Within its activities the Association also develops the open photonic system CzechLight. Thanks to its research involvement, CESNET represents the Czech Republic in important international projects, most notably the pan-European GÉANT network development and grid projects (EGI.eu), and participates actively in their implementation.

Press release, February 24, 2014

Last change: 16.2.2021